For many patient care applications, bodily fluids, such as mucus fluids and meconium fluids, as well as other potentially harmful bodily fluids, must be removed from a patient and disposed of in a safe and efficient manner. In this regard, there have been many different types and kinds of aspirator instruments, devices and tools for moving bodily fluids by suction or vacuum processes.
Various aspirator instruments are configured for removing certain types of bodily fluids from specific body cavities. For example, certain aspirator instruments are configured to dislodge and remove secretions, mucus, and debris from a nasal passageway of a user or patient, while other aspirator devices are configured to remove meconium or mucus fluids from a stomach or lung cavity during delivery of an infant. These aspirator instruments are configured in various shapes, depending on their intended use and more specifically on the shape of the body cavity holding the bodily fluids to be removed.
Because the removal of mucus fluids from the mouth and throat of patients confined in a primary care facility, such as a hospital facility, is such a common requirement in patient care, most, if not all, primary care facilities are equipped with bedside access control consoles. Such access control consoles provide primary care givers immediate access to gases, monitoring equipment, and suction/vacuum/water sources for patient care and treatment.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,002,534, which is incorporated herein by reference, describes in detail the typical use of such an oral aspirator instrument. The aspirator instrument is attached to the neck of a patient using a cord so that a mouthpiece or Yankauer tip instrument can be easily inserted into the mouth of the patient for drawing mucus and other fluids from the body cavity of the patient.
While such an arrangement may have been satisfactory for some applications, it has proven to be less than satisfactory in that a health care provider when not using the aspirator is compelled to either remove the aspirator instrument from the aspirator or lay the instrument with the vacuum tube attached thereon on the patient or the bed of the patient. Thus, if the instrument has been in use, residual body fluids may contaminate the patient or the bed of the patient creating an unwanted and undesired health risk due to the presence of undesirable bacteria and harmful bodily fluids.
Conversely, if the user desires to maintain a safe, clean environment, the aspirator must be utilized promptly so that the Yankauer instrument can be removed and immediately disposed of or alternately removed and placed in a proper container for cleaning and sterilization purposes.
While such a procedure can be followed for minimizing the creation of unwanted and undesired health risks, it is very expensive and time consuming, particularly where a patient must have his or her mouth and throat cleared on a regular and short term or elapsed time basis.
Another problem associated with prior known aspirator systems when utilized on a regular short elapsed time basis is associated with the accumulation of residual mucus fluids in and on the Yankauer tip when the vacuum or suction is terminated. In this regard, in many aspirator systems, when the body cavity aspirator instrument is removed from the mouth of the patient the suction operation is substantially diminished permitting any fluids remaining in the body cavity instrument to be trapped within the tip or end of the instrument and tubing connected to the aspirator.
Some of these problems have been considered and addressed by U.S. Pat. No. 5,752,286 (“the '286 patent”), which is incorporated herein by reference. The '286 patent describes a cleaning and storage system for a body cavity aspirator instrument. The system includes a holder for receiving an aspirator instrument for temporary storage purposes between periods of non-use. A wiper cap disposed over the mouth of the holder helps wipe the instrument of residual fluids when being inserted and removed from the holder. An inlet near the bottom of the holder permits the admittance of a cleaning agent to periodically clean the instrument.
While such an arrangement has solved many of the problems associated with the use of aspirator instruments in clean-room environments, increased concern about hospital sterilization, in conjunction with the rising costs of healthcare and healthcare equipment, has necessitated further improvements. The '286 patent requires that the holder be cleaned periodically in order to maintain sanitary conditions for its continued use. That notwithstanding, it has been found that after a certain period of time, depending on the frequency of use, cleaning is insufficient to maintain sanitary conditions and the entire holder must be replaced. Given the costs associated with replacing the entire holder, it would be desirable to find a solution that would obviate the need to replace the holder while maintaining sanitary conditions that are appropriate for hospital and clinical use.